@Allan: Player 7 should be aware of existing alliances and not ally with both Player 4 and Player 1. Player 7 has to make a choice. Admittedly, the house rules put it upon the players to stay up on who is allied with whom but that is something we all do in all of our games. The house rules are 1) no alliance can have more than 4 players, 2) each player within an alliance must ally with each of the other players of that alliance, and 3) once an alliance is formed, it cannot be dissolved except through surrender or total annihilation. In this game an alliance should not be thought of just as an alliance between two players but between 3 or 4 players. That alliance then basically performs as one team. At max, this game can only have 4 alliances (teams) with the current 13 players. One or two alliances are going to be short a player.

The above is my understanding of this game that Sailing Guy has organized.

Honeycone1 has the turn and will do it soon as our computer recovers from some horrible thing that's changed every file extension to .lnk and paralysed the whole system. I'm away, but we're trying to set him up on a different computer ASAP. The turn will be done within 24 hours at the very latest.

Apologies for unavoidable and unexpected delay due to techno explosion.

It seems we have a fundamental misunderstanding about how this game is to work regarding alliances. Sailing Guy needs to come by and explain. If my interpretation is correct which I believe it is based on an earlier confirmation by Sailing Guy, then I wonder if the game has been made unplayable due to this misunderstanding and the alliance actions some players have taken.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LazyBoy

My reading of the rules, is that the only restriction is you can have a maximum of 4 alliances.

So in my case I have 2 alliances, but the other 2 are not allied. They can go to war and I can't intervene because I am allied to both.

This to me seems to work quite well, it gives diplomacy a roll in the game.

From some conversations I've had with other players I sense there may be some lack of understanding about how alliances work when someone declares war. Below is my attempt to clarify:

Alliance A Player 1 Player 2

Alliance B Player 3 Player 4

Use Case Player 1 (Alliance A) declares war on Player 3 (Alliance B). Player 1 (Alliance A) is automatically at war with Player 4 (Alliance B). However, Player 2 (Alliance A) remains at peace. Player 2 is not automatically launched into war by the action of Player 1, his ally.

Basically, alliances are defensive in nature. By that I mean that if someone declares war on you, your ally is automatically at war them. On the other hand, if you declare war one someone, your ally is not automatically at war with them.

Simply put, think of an "alliance" as a group of players, not an "alliance" you make with a single other player. The concept was to put together factions, not a series of entangling alliances daisy chained together.

I haven't had the turn in awhile. Has someone made alliances that would break this house rule?

_____________________________

Phil aka SailingGuy

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. ~Aldous Huxley

well I dont think this is a game breaking issue. A player just has to decided which main alliance (Team) he wants to be on and ally with all members of it. If you ally with another person not in your team make it clear to them that its just a diplomatic cease fire so to speak and can be broken at any time. Instead of calling it an alliance we can call it a treaty.

so you will belong to a Alliance of max 4 players and you cant break this. but you can have temporary treaties that can be broken at any time.

However you must make it clear via in game message and on the boards that you have offered or accepted a TREATY. This should work just fine and allow Diplomacy to have a strategic impact on the game.

I'm not sure this will work for a variety of reasons: 1) "The concept was to put together factions, not a series of entangling alliances daisy chained together." --Sailing Guy (creator of this random scenario) 2) Not certain how the game engine would handle these "entangling alliances."

Faction A (all allies with one another) player 1 player 2 player 3

Faction B (all allies with one another) player 4 player 5 player 6

Use Case Player 3 also independently allies with player 4. Player 4 declares war on player 1. That should automatically bring players 2 and 3 into war with player 4. How does the game engine handle that since player 3 and player 4 are also allies? Does the game crash? Is the alliance automatically broken between players 3 and 4, and they are now at war? I don't know.

Also, I believe that player 3 allying with player 4 would give player 4 a complete view of players 1 and 2's map and unit locations. Not good!

I think if we vary from the original game concept it simply creates a lot of messiness with uncertain results.

quote:

ORIGINAL: 82ndtrooper

well I dont think this is a game breaking issue. A player just has to decided which main alliance (Team) he wants to be on and ally with all members of it. If you ally with another person not in your team make it clear to them that its just a diplomatic cease fire so to speak and can be broken at any time. Instead of calling it an alliance we can call it a treaty.

so you will belong to a Alliance of max 4 players and you cant break this. but you can have temporary treaties that can be broken at any time.

However you must make it clear via in game message and on the boards that you have offered or accepted a TREATY. This should work just fine and allow Diplomacy to have a strategic impact on the game.

I set up a couple of 3 player test games and the game engine automatically put you at war with all of the players allies when you declare war on him. So players in an alliance do need to all be allied to each other.

A problem arises when more than 1 alliance is offered in the same turn. This can be avoided if players accept only one alliance per turn. This will allow players to check who's allied with who

If you get more than 1 alliance you can always send a message to the second player asking them to offer again next turn